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"Breast-feeding a 3-year-old is normal, anthropologist says"

Breast-feeding a 3-year-old is normal, anthropologist says

By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY

Despite a breast-feeding brouhaha kicked off last week by a Time magazine cover photo of a mom nursing her 3-year-old son, that's actually the norm worldwide, experts say. But in the United States, breast-feeding children that old is practiced among a tiny sliver of mothers.

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Some
online are calling it "perverted" and "dangerous" to nurse a
3-year-old, but "it's normal for our species," says Katherine Dettwyler,
a professor of anthropology at the University of Delaware in Newark.

"It's not perverted, it's not sex, it's not women doing it for some
perverse need," she says. "It's normal like a nine-month pregnancy is
normal."

Dettwyler, who has published studies
on breast-feeding, found that most children around the world are
breast-fed for three to five years or longer.

That's
a sharp contrast with babies in the United States. Numbers for 2011
show that about three-quarters of American babies are breast-fed at
birth. By 6 months old, 44% are still being breast-fed, and by 12 months
just 24% are, says Laurence Grummer-Strawn, chief of the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention's nutrition branch.

The
number of moms who breast-feed two years and beyond in the United
States isn't known because the data come from a survey done of
18-month-old babies. But Ruby Roy, a pediatrician at La Rabida
Children's Hospital in Chicago, says that it's more common than might be
believed, and that moms are just hiding it.

"There's
so much negative social attitude that we just can't know," Roy says.
"But I have had many women in my practice tell me that they are
breast-feeding to two or three years. They're doing a night nursing
before the baby goes to bed, or in the morning — but they're not going
to tell anyone."

When Dettwyler studied 1,280 U.S.
children whose mothers nursed them for more than three years, she found
they were "perfectly fine and they didn't need therapy and they didn't
think they were having sex with their mothers."

The
children were nursed between three and nine years, with half being
weaned between ages 3 and 4. The mothers tended to be middle- and
upper-class women, the majority of whom were highly educated and worked
outside of the home.

"This is not the
stereotype of the Earth Mother nursing the child until he's 5, and she
also grows her own cotton and weaves her own diapers," Dettwyler says.

Multiple
studies show that breast-feeding is beneficial for both mother and
infant. Breast milk contains immune factors that protect children
against infection while their own immune system is still developing.

There
also appears to be a programming effect on the body such that babies
who nursed have lower rates of disease long after they are weaned.

Mothers
who breast-feed have lower rates of breast cancer and ovarian cancer,
says Grummer-Strawn. The longer they breast-feed, the lower their rates,
he says.

It's also possible that we evolved
to nurse children until they're around 5 or 6, says Dettwyler. Breast
milk is one of the only sources of long chain polyunsaturated fatty
acids that build brain tissue, she says.

It
isn't until age 5 or 6 that "95% of brain growth has been reached, and
that's also about the time that the child's immune system is ramped up
to full production," she says.

I love this article. I feel like a bit of a freak when I tell people I nurse my one year old but when we are actually nursing it feels wonderfully natural. This article helps me feel more secure in my breastfeeding goal of at least 3 and makes me believe I will actually continue to 5 or 6 if my DD doesn't self wean before.

That's awesome! I didn't know this with my older three. I breastfed them all passed a year and thought that was good. My youngest was Breastfed until she was three. It was completely normal and natural.

Love this! With my first and even the early days with my second I never thought about breast feeding past one. It was just assumed that we would be done by then if not before. Since my second was about 8 months or so though I have been doing a lot of research and the more I read and research the stronger my resolve to continue breast feeding until HE chooses to wean, not when society says he should. It's good to have articles like this to turn to when I get the disparaging remarks about how I'm harming my child or only continuing to nurse for selfish reasons. I'm doing it for him, for his benefit, not my own.

That's so funny. I went to U of Delaware and was double majoring in anthropology and biology. A lot of my ideas about health, nutrition, breastfeeding, etc come from my anthropology classes on hunter gatherer societies at Delaware, not medical school :).

I don't remember if I had her though. She may be young, younger than me anyway (I'm 41).

I think it's totally normal to breastfeed till three or beyond even although my kids all self weaned before then.

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